Yes, this is the title of an old Broadway show tune, and it’s certainly true here!
Looking up the slope is a mix of volunteers and things we planted for erosion control. In the latter category are junipers, phlox, bayberry, rose campion, willows, and in the former are native daisies, grapevines, asters and goldenrods. In the foreground are cattails and a winterberry holly (“Jim Dandy”); both like the damp area next to the pond.
The larger trees are mostly Eastern Red Cedar, white pine, quaking aspen, ash, chokecherry, elm and birch. In the middle ground are viburnum, magnolia, redbud, juniper and red twig dogwoods, and at left, willows and false spiraea. On the right, a burgundy-colored ninebark shrub was planted last fall. We’re also letting the staghorn sumac come up here because it’s great at stabilizing the slope. The alliums and irises are blooming.
We use wood chips on the pathway only; they don’t work for the slope, because they just get washed away. Note the wood chip pile beyond the pond. You can never have too many wood chips! For the steep slope, we try to use a combination of compost and mulch that has fragments that kind of hook into each other, so it won’t simply slide down.
Just for the sake of comparison, here’s what it looked like 6 years ago, in May of 2011, when it was overrun by knotweed and phragmites (and multiflora rose, bittersweet and buckthorn):
